very real air of comfort. It had a hospitable look. A pleasant post office, a well-furnished apothecary shop—in which minerals and curiosities mingled with drugs and extracts—a candy store, a village hotel, and trailing groups of pretty children and young girls were not wanting to impress the senses with an unusual impression of creature and home blessings.
The important human aggregates in Iceland are along its shores. The population of the interior forms minute hamlets, or is strung out into attenuated lines of farms, many miles apart. The shore settlements meet the outside world, the wear and tear of life is greater, and exchange of material in business ways more active. Here education and culture extend themselves more quickly, and world-ideas receive acceptance and circulation. The farmers struggle with the drudgery of harvesting the hay, breeding and raising sheep and cows, making butter and repairing and making implements and houses. They become a conservative and backward element, and miss the reaction with foreign ships and visitors, and the political spirit is with them more dormant and inactive. In the shore-villages, adventure
